In both Kubuntu and installations of KDE 4.2 and 4.3 on Gentoo systems, I would best describe the default KDE 4.2 and 4.3 themes as "blueish". Definately not grey.
It's the choice of enterprise desktops because it fits with the mantra of locking down the user and preventing them from doing anything useful. With Windows you need bigbrotherware to do it. With GNOME, the functionality has simply been removed in the name of usability as part of Havoc Pennington's reign of terror.
I've never had problems with Amarok playing MP3s on any of my Kubuntu machines, I started with 8.04 or 8.10. Did you forget to install the kubuntu-restricted-extras package like you installed the ubuntu-restricted-extras package? (Otherwise you would not have had any MP3 functionality at all in Kubuntu or Ubuntu...)
The KDE NetworkManager plasmoid was a bit funky in 9.04, they fixed it in 9.10 by moving back to a notification tray applet that works very well.
I have had no such problems with Kubuntu. It's been quite stable for me.
You mention in a later post you're using Gentoo - No wonder, Gentoo does a SHIT job of packaging KDE 4.x. KDE 4.x on Gentoo is an epic crashfest, and even minor system upgrades are often a weekend project due to the fact that 4.x is still ~x86 and ~amd64 (or at least still was as of a month or so ago.)
It's why all of my new distro installations are Kubuntu and I reformatted and reinstalled my main desktop (from Gentoo to Kubuntu 9.10) last weekend. File server is next up, probably this weekend if I get a hard drive from Newegg to back up my MythTV recordings with in time.
I actually liked 4.2 too. The only thing I kept "back" from KDE3 was Amarok (which is semi-independent of KDE releases, but somewhat connected.) Amarok 2.0 was awful - horrible error handling for streams, and inconsistent collection performance (although much of that is likely just crappy Gentoo packaging.)
Gentoo continuing to have KDE 4.x masked as unstable even well into the KDE4.3 release cycle is why all of my new machines run Kubuntu, and I have even started doing reinstalls of machines with existing Gentoo installs. It's just ridiculous that the only KDE release marked stable by a distro (3.5.x) has been unsupported by upstream for months.
KDE 4.3 on Kubuntu systems is excellent, I LOVE it.
You can actually (or at least used to be able to) get around this by FULLY disabling data on your plan.
Pay-as-you-go data is, however, so actively discouraged that I wouldn't be surprised if they outright refuse to sell you the phone if you want PAYG data.
Nope. That did not happen to me once in the entire time I had a Treo 650 (notorious for accidentally racking up major data service charges) and had data service completely disabled/blocked on my account.
Simple. Tell Verizon to disable all data service on your phone if you don't want it at all. That way you don't get billed, you just get an error if you hit the wrong button. I did that on my Treo 650 and never once received an errant data charge.
Or get a 5GB data plan.
Also, AT&T is also basically the same.
BTW, you have to *seriously* fight with your provider if you want a data-capable phone without either fully disabling the data plan OR a "practically unlimited" plan for just the reasons the article submitter is complaining about.
I forget, but as I understand it, you might not have the best luck if you go to a store. There's a specific "international issues" service number, where if you call THAT number and tell them you'll be traveling out of the country and would like to use a local SIM there, they'll give you an unlock code. I think the number exists in some places on the xda-developers.com forums.
Took me about 10 minutes. Sometimes apparently it takes longer and they'll email the unlock code instead of putting you on hold and giving it to you eventually.
Even out in Owego (T-Mo died for my ex right around the Route 26 exit from 17), inserting a T-Mo SIM into a phone would result in that phone's IMEI being blacklisted by the tower for 15-20 minutes. When she first moved to the area, roaming on AT&T worked in Owego, but T-Mo's AT&T roaming breaks horribly for months at a time.
We did an experiment where we took her SIM and put it into my unlocked AT&T phone. From 4 bars to no signal. We then put my SIM back in - No signal for 15-20 minutes.
I had a Treo 650 with Verizon and have seen basically no reduction in coverage since switching to AT&T (Tilt and then Tilt 2). Both barely work/worked at my desk.
They recently rolled out UMTS in Owego, my apartment is right on the border of coverage, it is slightly annoying because my phone will prefer one bar of UMTS to four bars of EDGE.
Pretty much, and I think they provision it as kind of a "front end" for your existing email account that adds ActiveSync capabilities on top of an account that normally doesn't support it (IMAP or POP)
However, for a lot of people, many of the big webmail providers (def. Hotmail and Gmail) directly support ActiveSync now.
There are four major ones, nearly everyone else is a reseller of the four.
The four are split 50/50 into two technology camps: Verizon and Sprint use Qualcomm CDMA2000, AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM/UMTS.
Of each of the technology camps, there's one "big boy" and one "small fry" provider. The "big boys" (AT&T and Verizon) have relatively expensive service plans, however they also have quite comprehensive coverage even in rural areas. The "small fry" have cheap service plans, but pitiful coverage areas. For example, T-Mobile users get zero coverage for 15-20 miles of highway west of Vestal, NY, including where I live and work (Owego). AT&T and Verizon, however, have very strong coverage in all areas around Owego, despite it being a relatively small rural town.
Re:Is there any viable (non-console) alternative?
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MythTV 0.22 Released
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· Score: 1
Isaac Richards, the lead MythTV developer, lives in the united United States of America, where people can (and will) sue anybody for anything.
Are you a lawyer? If you aren't, shut up. If you are, offer to defend Isaac and the other US-based Myth devs for free when they get sued. Let's face it, even if they have a legal leg to stand on and would win in court, getting sued is an expensive proposition. Some lawsuits are (unfortunately) won by default because the defendant doesn't have the money to fight it out.
The only times I've had Myth crash in the past year have been due to malformed recordings.
This is a problem in my area with the local network affiliate with basically every DVR solution out there that attempts to record Time Warner's re-feed of WBNG. It seems to be a longstanding artifact of the year-long lawyer fight the two had that prevented TWC customers from getting WBNG feeds for ages, and also of the fact that WBNG is supposedly bankrupt.
That said, unlike many other solutions, Myth has a "lossless transcode" capability that remuxes broken streams, and fixes 90% of WBNG recordings.
My biggest "fiddling" problems with MythTV have been a result of the fact that I was a Gentoo user for years. Upgrading Myth usually meant upgrading the Gentoo boxes... I started using Ubuntu on my netbook last year, then put it on my new laptop, and soon swore any new system would not be Gentoo. Last weekend I decided that even my existing Gentoo installations merited a nuke and repave. Main desktop is upgraded, backend in 1-2 weekends (gotta do it when no recordings are scheduled), HTPC once the backend is done.
Anything less than tri-band GSM is unheard of. Quad-band GSM (All 2.5G bands in USA and Europe) is pretty common.
Tri-band UMTS is rarer, but now to achieve compatibility with all providers you would need quad-band UMTS. (2 for AT&T, 1 for T-Mo USA and 1-2 Korean or Japanese providers, 1 for the rest of the world) I have yet to see a quadband UMTS device.
T-Mo and AT&T both use GSM and are pretty good about SIM-unlocking their phones. (In general both will provide a SIM unlock if you've been a customer in good standing, meaning bills paid, for 90 days.)
That said, there are enough differences between the bands they use that I wish you luck in using a T-Mo phone on AT&T or an AT&T phone on T-Mo, unless you enjoy the pain and suffering of EDGE data. I do not know of a single phone on this planet that does UMTS in all three of the bands used for it in the USA.
The only difference between VZW's pricing and AT&T's pricing is that the non-tethering plans with AT&T don't officially have a 5GB cap.
That said, good luck proving that you are hitting 5GB without tethering on AT&T. I can't think of any usage case where you'd be able to hit 5GB without tethering. I do periodic light tethering and moderate on-device data usage and I rarely exceed 500MB per month.
If you rack up 5GB on a non-tethering plan, good luck proving to AT&T that you are not tethering. (And how the hell are you pulling down THAT much data w/o tethering?)
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What distro?
In both Kubuntu and installations of KDE 4.2 and 4.3 on Gentoo systems, I would best describe the default KDE 4.2 and 4.3 themes as "blueish". Definately not grey.
It's the choice of enterprise desktops because it fits with the mantra of locking down the user and preventing them from doing anything useful. With Windows you need bigbrotherware to do it. With GNOME, the functionality has simply been removed in the name of usability as part of Havoc Pennington's reign of terror.
I've never had problems with Amarok playing MP3s on any of my Kubuntu machines, I started with 8.04 or 8.10. Did you forget to install the kubuntu-restricted-extras package like you installed the ubuntu-restricted-extras package? (Otherwise you would not have had any MP3 functionality at all in Kubuntu or Ubuntu...)
The KDE NetworkManager plasmoid was a bit funky in 9.04, they fixed it in 9.10 by moving back to a notification tray applet that works very well.
I have had no such problems with Kubuntu. It's been quite stable for me.
You mention in a later post you're using Gentoo - No wonder, Gentoo does a SHIT job of packaging KDE 4.x. KDE 4.x on Gentoo is an epic crashfest, and even minor system upgrades are often a weekend project due to the fact that 4.x is still ~x86 and ~amd64 (or at least still was as of a month or so ago.)
It's why all of my new distro installations are Kubuntu and I reformatted and reinstalled my main desktop (from Gentoo to Kubuntu 9.10) last weekend. File server is next up, probably this weekend if I get a hard drive from Newegg to back up my MythTV recordings with in time.
I have seen nothing like what Jurily complains about even on an Asus Eee 1000HE (Single core Atom, Intel GMA950).
That was even with Ubuntu 9.04, which was known to have SERIOUS performance issues with Intel graphics.
I actually liked 4.2 too. The only thing I kept "back" from KDE3 was Amarok (which is semi-independent of KDE releases, but somewhat connected.) Amarok 2.0 was awful - horrible error handling for streams, and inconsistent collection performance (although much of that is likely just crappy Gentoo packaging.)
Gentoo continuing to have KDE 4.x masked as unstable even well into the KDE4.3 release cycle is why all of my new machines run Kubuntu, and I have even started doing reinstalls of machines with existing Gentoo installs. It's just ridiculous that the only KDE release marked stable by a distro (3.5.x) has been unsupported by upstream for months.
KDE 4.3 on Kubuntu systems is excellent, I LOVE it.
You can actually (or at least used to be able to) get around this by FULLY disabling data on your plan.
Pay-as-you-go data is, however, so actively discouraged that I wouldn't be surprised if they outright refuse to sell you the phone if you want PAYG data.
Nope. That did not happen to me once in the entire time I had a Treo 650 (notorious for accidentally racking up major data service charges) and had data service completely disabled/blocked on my account.
Simple. Tell Verizon to disable all data service on your phone if you don't want it at all. That way you don't get billed, you just get an error if you hit the wrong button. I did that on my Treo 650 and never once received an errant data charge.
Or get a 5GB data plan.
Also, AT&T is also basically the same.
BTW, you have to *seriously* fight with your provider if you want a data-capable phone without either fully disabling the data plan OR a "practically unlimited" plan for just the reasons the article submitter is complaining about.
AT&T uses different frequencies than Europe. Not sure about CA, I think they may use the same 3G bands as AT&T.
The Milestone says UMTS in 900 and 2100. At best it may cover one of the two bands AT&T uses. (I always get 850 vs 900 and 1800 vs 1900 confused.)
T-Mo uses the 1700 MHz band for UMTS, few phones support this.
I forget, but as I understand it, you might not have the best luck if you go to a store. There's a specific "international issues" service number, where if you call THAT number and tell them you'll be traveling out of the country and would like to use a local SIM there, they'll give you an unlock code. I think the number exists in some places on the xda-developers.com forums.
Took me about 10 minutes. Sometimes apparently it takes longer and they'll email the unlock code instead of putting you on hold and giving it to you eventually.
The "in between" area is HUGE.
Even out in Owego (T-Mo died for my ex right around the Route 26 exit from 17), inserting a T-Mo SIM into a phone would result in that phone's IMEI being blacklisted by the tower for 15-20 minutes. When she first moved to the area, roaming on AT&T worked in Owego, but T-Mo's AT&T roaming breaks horribly for months at a time.
We did an experiment where we took her SIM and put it into my unlocked AT&T phone. From 4 bars to no signal. We then put my SIM back in - No signal for 15-20 minutes.
I had a Treo 650 with Verizon and have seen basically no reduction in coverage since switching to AT&T (Tilt and then Tilt 2). Both barely work/worked at my desk.
They recently rolled out UMTS in Owego, my apartment is right on the border of coverage, it is slightly annoying because my phone will prefer one bar of UMTS to four bars of EDGE.
Pretty much, and I think they provision it as kind of a "front end" for your existing email account that adds ActiveSync capabilities on top of an account that normally doesn't support it (IMAP or POP)
However, for a lot of people, many of the big webmail providers (def. Hotmail and Gmail) directly support ActiveSync now.
LOL. Not many other possibilities for an engineer around here.
There are four major ones, nearly everyone else is a reseller of the four.
The four are split 50/50 into two technology camps: Verizon and Sprint use Qualcomm CDMA2000, AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM/UMTS.
Of each of the technology camps, there's one "big boy" and one "small fry" provider. The "big boys" (AT&T and Verizon) have relatively expensive service plans, however they also have quite comprehensive coverage even in rural areas. The "small fry" have cheap service plans, but pitiful coverage areas. For example, T-Mobile users get zero coverage for 15-20 miles of highway west of Vestal, NY, including where I live and work (Owego). AT&T and Verizon, however, have very strong coverage in all areas around Owego, despite it being a relatively small rural town.
Isaac Richards, the lead MythTV developer, lives in the united United States of America, where people can (and will) sue anybody for anything.
Are you a lawyer? If you aren't, shut up. If you are, offer to defend Isaac and the other US-based Myth devs for free when they get sued. Let's face it, even if they have a legal leg to stand on and would win in court, getting sued is an expensive proposition. Some lawsuits are (unfortunately) won by default because the defendant doesn't have the money to fight it out.
Use Myth's "lossless transcode" function.
I thought it was just my local CBS affiliate and their cable "re-feed" to TWC, but your comment makes me thing that it may be CBS in general.
The problem isn't with the video itself, the transport stream muxing is b0rked. "lossless transcode" remuxes the stream and fixes 95% of recordings.
Those that don't get fixed will have out-of-sync audio. :(
What tuner? Most have been integrated into the kernel at this point.
I know working with my PVR-500 became SO much easier once ivtv mainlined...
The only times I've had Myth crash in the past year have been due to malformed recordings.
This is a problem in my area with the local network affiliate with basically every DVR solution out there that attempts to record Time Warner's re-feed of WBNG. It seems to be a longstanding artifact of the year-long lawyer fight the two had that prevented TWC customers from getting WBNG feeds for ages, and also of the fact that WBNG is supposedly bankrupt.
That said, unlike many other solutions, Myth has a "lossless transcode" capability that remuxes broken streams, and fixes 90% of WBNG recordings.
My biggest "fiddling" problems with MythTV have been a result of the fact that I was a Gentoo user for years. Upgrading Myth usually meant upgrading the Gentoo boxes... I started using Ubuntu on my netbook last year, then put it on my new laptop, and soon swore any new system would not be Gentoo. Last weekend I decided that even my existing Gentoo installations merited a nuke and repave. Main desktop is upgraded, backend in 1-2 weekends (gotta do it when no recordings are scheduled), HTPC once the backend is done.
Anything less than tri-band GSM is unheard of. Quad-band GSM (All 2.5G bands in USA and Europe) is pretty common.
Tri-band UMTS is rarer, but now to achieve compatibility with all providers you would need quad-band UMTS. (2 for AT&T, 1 for T-Mo USA and 1-2 Korean or Japanese providers, 1 for the rest of the world) I have yet to see a quadband UMTS device.
T-Mo and AT&T both use GSM and are pretty good about SIM-unlocking their phones. (In general both will provide a SIM unlock if you've been a customer in good standing, meaning bills paid, for 90 days.)
That said, there are enough differences between the bands they use that I wish you luck in using a T-Mo phone on AT&T or an AT&T phone on T-Mo, unless you enjoy the pain and suffering of EDGE data. I do not know of a single phone on this planet that does UMTS in all three of the bands used for it in the USA.
Simple.
Good luck hitting 5GB without tethering.
If somehow someone manages to hit 5GB without tethering, good luck proving it.
Yup.
The only difference between VZW's pricing and AT&T's pricing is that the non-tethering plans with AT&T don't officially have a 5GB cap.
That said, good luck proving that you are hitting 5GB without tethering on AT&T. I can't think of any usage case where you'd be able to hit 5GB without tethering. I do periodic light tethering and moderate on-device data usage and I rarely exceed 500MB per month.
Tethering with AT&T is the same - $60/mo for 5GB.
If you rack up 5GB on a non-tethering plan, good luck proving to AT&T that you are not tethering. (And how the hell are you pulling down THAT much data w/o tethering?)